A young village woman (Zeenat Aman) with a voice like a songbird and a face disfigured from a childhood accident captures the fancy of a man (Shashi Kapoor), who hears her sing and imagines that she must be equally beautiful to look at. They marry, and only then is her face revealed. He leaves her in search of his fantasy until, in the end, he finds beauty in the truth. “Satyam Shivam Sundaram tells of a woman's journey from disfiguration to transfiguration through love. Audiences may have been disconcerted by the fact that it is a story of spartan simplicity compared to most Hindi films: no villains and fights, no subplots and parallel story lines, no vamp. It does possess a mythical, fairy-tale quality: the realistic sequences (e.g. the climactic flood) are nearly as dream-like as the dream sequences. The dream sequences are outrageously baroque--call them kitsch, camp, or what have you--they are scenes of memorable cinema, and evocative of some of the best things in Busby Berkeley, and the Vincente Minnelli of Yolanda and the Thief and The Ziegfeld Follies. These are not negligible references. A major contributor to what is best about (the film)--its luscious visual style--was cinematographer Radhu Karmakar.... Raj Kapoor has stated that his inspiration (for the story) was taken from Lata Mangeshkar...India's top playback singer (whose) voice has been heard on the soundtrack of many a Kapoor film.” Elliott Stein